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| Owen Futeran, Mervyn Smith, the Honourable Irwin Cotler and ACDP MP Steven Swart. |
Hate speech was an assault on the purposes of freedom of speech and should be excluded from its ambit, said the Honourable Irwin Cotler at a breakfast meeting held under the auspices of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape Council) at Café Riteve on Wednesday 26 August.
Cotler, a member of the Canadian parliament, served as justice minister and attorney general of that country from 2003 to 2006.
The renowned international human rights lawyer remembered that he had been “briefly arrested” on his first visit to this country in 1981, after an address he delivered at the University of the Witwatersrand, in which he proposed releasing Nelson Mandela.
Sharing his thoughts on freedom of expression, hate speech and statesanctioned incitement to genocide, Cotler said that the discussion involved balancing two core values — that of freedom of speech and the right of minorities to protection. He noted that both the South African and Canadian constitutions had enshrined freedom of speech but had authorised limitations on it.
Noting the rise in hate speech both in this country and his own, Cotler warned that its purveyors “seek to shield behind freedom of speech”.
“Hate speech gives freedom of speech a bad name,” said. Although freedom of speech was the lifeblood of a democracy … “There is no such thing as the absolute protection of this right, even though people still persist in saying there is.
“All free and democratic societies — including the United States with its First Amendment doctrine — exclude certain categories from freedom of speech.”
In both Canada and South Africa, hate speech was specifically excluded, he added.
“Hate speech is fundamentally a discriminatory practice and fuels inequality — it runs counter to the goals of a free and democratic society.”
Referring to the notion of the “slippery slope”, Cotler cautioned that tolerating hate speech would result in more of it, not less.
Citing the Shoah and Rwanda, he noted that the world had witnessed “an explosion” in state-sanctioned incitement to genocide. The epicentre of this phenomenon today was President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran.
“States have a legal responsibility to act so as to prevent this. But there is not one state party in the international community that has undertaken any of the modest legal remedies provided by international law to combat it.”
Cotler told the gathering that the first words he uttered after being sworn in as Minister of Justice were taken from Deuteronomy: “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof — Justice, justice shalt thou pursue.”
It was with this injunction in mind that South African Jews were obligated to make a contribution to preventing hate speech here.
“They can also play a role in alerting the government that they have a responsibility to prevent statesanctioned incitement to genocide.”
